El Tri's trip here not just for kicks

Game is friendly, but team is serious

Guillermo Ochoa and Giovani Dos Santos have trimmed their wild curls. Gerardo Torrado has shaved off his completely.

Players don't walk off the bus yapping into cell phones. There are, in fact, specific times when they are allowed to use them.

When a meal is scheduled for 6 p.m., it is 6:00 p.m., not a few guys strolling into the dining hall at 6:05, and a few more at 6:10 or 6:20, and a few deciding to order room service.

Coach Javier Aguirre was a couple minutes late for a press conference yesterday. He opened it by apologizing profusely. Twice.

Mexico's national soccer team is coming to San Diego tomorrow and staying nine days, including Sunday's 5 p.m. friendly against Guatemala at Qualcomm Stadium. But let them make one thing eminently clear: This is not a vacation – shopping in the morning, afternoons on the beach, evenings in the Gaslamp – disguised as a soccer game.

El Tri means business.

Does it have any other choice?

The final round of World Cup qualifying is at its midpoint, and right now fourth-place Mexico (2-3) would not get one of the region's three automatic spots for 2010 in South Africa. There are five games left, three at home, and Mexican players are saying they need to win four of them.

The next qualifier is Aug. 12 against the United States at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. Mathematically, it is not a must-win. Mentally, it probably is.

Those close to the team say if El Tri loses to the Americans, who are 0-22-1 in Mexico, it would amount to an insurmountable psychological blow. Even a tie might shatter its fragile psyche.

That is Aug. 12, seven weeks hence. Aguirre, who already saved Mexico once from the brink of World Cup elimination, isn't waiting idly to learn his team's fate.

So his team trained Monday morning in Mexico City, flew to Atlanta, then drove to the Georgia Dome for another practice that didn't end until after 10 p.m. There is a friendly there tonight against Venezuela, then more two-a-day practices, then the Guatemala friendly at the Q, then five more days of double sessions in San Diego before opening the CONCACAF Gold Cup in Oakland July 5.

Aguirre certainly does not have momentum on his side, or confidence, and the current talent level in Mexico is not what it was when he rescued an ailing qualification campaign ahead of the 2002 World Cup. But the one thing he does have is time with his players, a luxury national coaches rarely are afforded, and he intends to use it.

He has a minimum of five games: two friendlies this week and three first-round games in the Gold Cup, the region's biennial championship. Reach the July 26 final, and El Tri will be together for eight games and a staggering 36 straight days.

“It is important, very important, to get this chance to work together,” said Aguirre, who replaced the deposed Sven-Goran Eriksson in April and immediately jumped into a pair of qualifiers with little preparation. “We need to take advantage of the time. We want to have a presentable team against the United States.”